Your body is your temple. You only have one body. There are so many different phrases and sayings, but they all focus on one thing; take care of your body by making healthy decisions today for tomorrow.

In order to guide your choices and to reach your goals for a healthier you, it is important to establish and follow a personal wellness plan. If you are currently experiencing health issues, this is even more essential to implement into your daily activities.

It isn’t difficult to put a personal wellness plan together. It’ll take some calculating and a little research and can be put together using Microsoft Excel quite easily.

How to Write a Wellness Plan

The purpose in creating a wellness plan and “putting it to paper” is to identify your health goals and provide a plan to follow to reach these goals. Even the best intentions can quickly be forgotten when not written down due to the day-to-day, but when you take the time to research and put a plan in writing, it is easier to hold oneself accountable.

Decide whether you will be focusing on the short-term or the long-term. A short-term wellness plan is used to target and correct specific health problems. For instance, high cholesterol would be something a short-term wellness plan would focus on and the goal of this plan would be to identify ways to lower your cholesterol. A long-term wellness plan focuses on your daily health for 6 months or more. Included in this would be weight control, muscle build, heart rates/pulse, etc.

What are your goals? Does cancer run in the family? Do you plan to get pregnant in the near future? These are reasons for having a health and wellness plan. Develop a plan to help prevent cancer. Develop a plan to provide for a healthy pregnancy. And so on. Do you get colds every winter? Be proactive and put together a short-term plan to reduce your chances of getting a cold this coming winter. Identify your goals and then put together the wellness plan to help you achieve these goals.

Identify the steps that will help you reach and achieve your goals. Examples of steps to help would be:

Recipes for healthy meals

Consumption of known herbs or medicines for your symptoms or for prevention

Exercise regimen

Rewards that you give yourself for staying on the plan or reaching identified milestones within your plan

The rewards step is important because it provides a way to identify milestones within your plan that once reached and the reward is made it helps to reinforce the overall goal of the plan and the greater reward down the road. It is hard to stick to a plan when you don’t see any immediate results, often with a wellness plan you won’t see immediate results, but by rewarding yourself along the way, in a sense, you are seeing results.

No two wellness plans will be the same. You need to take into consideration your health goal, your daily activities, your diet, and what motivators you can identify to help reward you an keep you on track to reaching the overall goal of your short-term or long-term wellness plan.

Walk to Wellness is designed to reduce the health risks associated with physical inactivity, a new component of Award Concepts’ employee solutions. It is a ready-to-use interactive walking campaign that is easy to implement, incentivize and promote. It tracks progress on a population-wide basis. Participants are awarded points for the amount of steps they complete during the program timeframe. These points can be redeemed in the form of health and wellness award items. Example items would include: head phones, picnic basket, hand weights, digital multifunctional scale, medicine ball, yoga mat, etc.

Walk to Wellness Highlights

Targets inactive population

Track steps

Individual or group participation

Walking resources

Tracking tools

Weekly motivational e-mails

Incentive friendly

Walk to Wellness Incentive Options

Participants receive a t-shirt and water bottle once enrolled in the program. This items not only recognize their participation, but it promotes the program to their co-workers as well as to people within the community. As various goals are achieved additional awards may be redeemed. The program allows for incentive reports which are available at varying times.

Walk to Wellness Reporting

Enrollment data

Enrolled users/walking groups

Outcomes data upon campaign completion

Total steps

Total number of people meeting goals

Increased exercise

Self-efficacy

Satisfaction results

The Walk to Wellness Incentive Program helps participants realize the long-term benefits of physical activity.

Let Award Concepts help promote Health and Physical Fitness Programs with the following brands; Eagle Claw, Oregon Scientific, The North Face, Huffy, Wenzel, Swiss Gear, and more! Contact us to learn more about the items and programs we provide for promoting health and wellness at your workplace.

*Source: National Association for Health & Fitness, The Network of State and Govenor’s Councils.

I received an email today from Oregon Scientific introducing their “wellness collection” of products. There are currently two products available and two additional products which are “coming soon”. Award Concepts will be introducing these items into our employee recognition programs as we continue to be at the forefront of active and health conscious award items.